Moana's Rotten Tomatoes Score Ranks Among The Worst Live-Action Disney Remakes
by Joe Roberts · /FilmDisney has continued its quest to sap the magic from its beloved catalogue, this time with a remake of "Moana." 10 years after the animated original debuted to massive success, The House of Mouse asked "What if we did a version of this that wasn't good?" Thus, a live-action "Moana" is now upon us, and its 33% Rotten Tomatoes score suggests it's mission accomplished for Disney.
This is far from the studio's first cynical attempt to milk previous hits. Disney has been churning out live-action remakes of their animated films at an alarming rate for some time, technically kicking things off with 1994's "The Jungle Book" but ramping things up in 2010 with Tim Burton's "Alice in Wonderland." Since then it's been a game of rapidly diminishing returns — at least creatively. Commercially, these remakes have frequently printed money for Disney, and in fairness there were some genuine highlights amid the dross, with 2016's "The Jungle Book" standing as a triumph of CGI-meets-live-action wizardry. In fact, Jon Favreau's film remains the best Disney live action remake according to Rotten Tomatoes. The worst? Well, "Moana" is making a play for that unfortunate title.
Wouldn't you know it, "Moana" turned out to be a flat, lifeless, artificial rehash, to quote /Film's Witney Seibold. At least we can hope this marks the beginning of the end for these projects. Even if "Moana" overcomes its meager box projections and proves successful, Disney is running out of movies to re-imagine. But even if the studio felt bold enough to adapt films even more recent than "Moana," this latest nostalgia play now ranks among the lowest-rated Disney live-action remakes on Rotten Tomatoes. Surely, the message is clear: that's enough for now.
Moana only just beat the abject Pinocchio in the Disney live action remake rankings
At the time of writing, "Moana" has a 33% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes based on 46 reviews. What's more, only five of 21 "top critics" liked the movie, which equates to a percentage score of 23.8. Not great, then.
As you might expect, the negative reviews were about as harsh as they come. As Clarisse Loughrey of The Independent put it, "Dwayne Johnson's terrible wig is just one low point of a film that has all the visual allure of a Febreeze advert." Others compared the film's visual style to that of "AI slop" and accused the movie of being "creatively empty." The Times' Kevin Maher even went so far as to accuse the film of provoking "only an exquisite form of agony."
That said, Variety's Owen Gleiberman felt the movie worked "100%," and was evidently won over in part by the fact "half the film IS animated" — a strange thing to highlight considering it only emphasizes the redundancy of "Moana" 2026. Indeed, this was the exact reason William Bibbiani of TheWrap remained unimpressed overall, writing, "The only time the live-action 'Moana' comes alive is when it's animated."
Ultimately, the critical response put "Moana" near the very bottom of the live-action Disney remake rankings on Rotten Tomatoes. As it stands, the movie sits just above 2000's "102 Dalmatians" which bears a lowly 30% rating. The only films with lower RT scores are 2016's "Alice Through the Looking Glass" with 29% and the wooden 2022 remake of Disney's "Pinocchio" with 27%. There is, of course, still time for "Moana" to fall further. But either way, it's destined to go down as a major misstep in a sea of similarly ill-conceived duds.